Pages tagged "Cambridge and District Trades Council"

As previously mentioned on our mailing list, Cambridge and District Trades Council and Cambridge Labour Party have called a march tomorrow to demand an end to the public sector pay cap and a £10 minimum wage. We'll assemble at 11.30 to march, then rally at 12.30 at Little St Mary's Church, Trumpington Street, where Richard Allday (Unite), Daniel Zeichner MP, Laurie Heseldon (SERTUC), Lewis Herbert (leader, Cambridge City Council), and Jo Rust (UNISON) will be among the speakers. This one's going to be great!

Our friends on the Cambridge and District Trades Council have organized a rally and celebrations on May Day, International Workers' Day. There'll be speeches by trade unionists and by the Labour Party candidate for mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Kevin Price, as well as arts, music, and children's activities.

The Cambridge and District Trades Council will hold a stall on Saturday to encourage union membership and participation, as part of the Heart Unions campaign supported by the Trades Union Congress. We'll never tire of saying that organizing in unions gives us our best everyday chance of a fair deal at work and outside.

Tomorrow our friends from the Cambridge and District Trades Council will hold their annual Winter Warmer at the Portland Arms, with Attila the Stockbroker, Grace Petrie, and the other performers above, speakers from the Labour Party and from Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, and the poet and Peterborough Trades Council president Ron Graves as compère.

The joint Cambridge effort towards the Convoy to Calais on Saturday 18 June, a moving demonstration of solidarity with refugees, is taking shape. We want an impressive convoy with as many vehicles as we can find – and as many passengers as we have seats to help unload the food, clothes, and other needed materials the convoy will transport to the warehouses that support the Calais camp.

More than four months after the murder of Cambridge student Giulio Regeni during his fieldwork in Egypt, this public meeting will bring together students, academics, trade unionists, and other local residents to continue the campaign for justice; not only for Giulio himself, but also for the many Egyptian citizens who have suffered a similar fate.

Continuing the Heart Unions week, the Cambridge and District Trades Council will hold a meeting on how to fight the austerity policies which held down workers' wages for almost five years (six and counting in the public sector) and are stripping away the public services on which they rely. Everyone's welcome at this meeting, where speakers will include Heather Wakefield (Head of Local Government, Police, and Justice, UNISON) and the victimized schoolteacher Simon O'Hara (National Union of Teachers), suspended from Small Heath School in Birmingham apparently for his work as an NUT representative.

As the government's repressive Trade Union Bill is debated in the House of Lords this month and next, the Trades Union Congress is supporting a week of events, Heart Unions, to raise awareness of why unions matter and how the bill threatens them. We'll reaffirm our belief that organizing in unions gives us our best everyday chance of a fair deal at work and outside.

Organizing in trade unions gives us our best everyday chance of a fair deal at work and outside, but unions have faced repeated attacks by employers and the state for their challenge to unrestrained profit. The latest is the Conservative government's repressive Trade Union Bill, which for example would require up to 80 per cent majorities in ballots for industrial action.

Cambridge and District Trades Council and Cambridge Labour Party have organized a meeting to discuss how we can stop the bill becoming law, with guest speakers Keith Ewing (President, Institute of Employment Rights), Lewis Herbert (Leader, Cambridge City Council), and Dave Smith (Secretary, Blacklist Support Group).

The open letter below has been sent to all Cambridgeshire county councillors, and was first published on the UNISON Cambridgeshire website. We encourage readers too to write to their county councillors to protest the proposed deal with Kora, a subsidiary of Regus Group.